Coast-to-coast live recording

[junkstar]

I have been asked to look into the best way to record high quality (microphone) interview recordings when the participants are in different cities. We want broadcast quality, and have the gear in each location (mics, boards, recorders etc), but apart from running two decks that are manually sync'd (with an audible marker) and then combined in post-production, I am wondering what other options may be. These are short interview segments (5 mins) so will not be hard to combine digitally, but is there a way to do this via phone line somehow? Thanks.

[soundguy]

If you need to record the thing live for some reason, find the studio in your town that has dedicated T1 lines. Its more comon than you might think, just find out who does the most work for NPR and chances are pretty good that there will be a dedicated T1 line to use. If you dont need to be that elaborate its just as easy to get a PSC phone tap or other similar box and a two track recorder like a DAT or something else that will run at speed, your computer, whatever. Put the phone line on one track and the mic for the talent on the other. Have the other person in the other city do the same, dump both into an editor and you dont need any synch providing both recorders run at speed, all you have to do is line up the phone source from the one recording with the mic source from the other and you are done. You can flip the polarity on one of those to help you line it up, when it cancels the most, thats your zero. It probably wont ever cancel completely as the sources are totally different sounding but it will get you close enough fast. Synch isnt critical with something like that if its a Q&A type of thing, not unless both parties are talking over each other.

You can do that setup in someone's bedroom, all you need is the location gear. Anyone with experience working on documentaries should be able to help you out, this is a pretty standard thing to have to do on a doc. You can get a phone tap box from any place that rents film sound equipment or buy one if your budget allows, they are probably under $200.

My only advice is to try to use similar mic's on both ends. You generally have different acoustic environments, so cutting between each person is what it is, but thats only made worse if you have mics that arent matching at both locations. IF you do it in a recording studio that has a V/O booth, this can be seamless but its not really necessary, just find a nice small room with carpet and put the talent on a bed or other type of not hard surface and you should be fine.

dave

[kayagum]

BSW has a ton of radio/phone/T1 type gear....

http://www.bswusa.com/broadcast.asp